There is a wonderful creative community on facebook - 52 Week Illustration Challenge. It's called a challenge, because we each challenge ourselves to produce an illustration every week following a prompt set by the group's admin. I think of it as a community because there is a huge amount of support and encouragement amongst its members to have faith in our work and to grow as artists. (There I said it, 'artist'!)

Monday, 16 November 2015

Week 45 Peace

Everyone found this week hard. There are so many parts of the world where there is no peace. This prompt was timed to coincide with Remembrance Day and WW1, which was known as the war to end all wars.My first illustration depicts Egyptian Christians protecting Muslims as they prayed.Half way through the week, there was a terrorist attack on Paris. All the world's media was focused on Paris and other parts of the world faded away. My second illustration was deliberately not just about Paris, the story of it is with the picture.

Both drawn on a wacom tablet in photoshop

"This is our cry. This is our prayer. Peace on Earth."Japanese tradition says that if you make 1000 paper cranes you can make a wish.This is an illustration of a statue of girl called Sadako. She was two when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, as a result she developed leukemia. Before she died she decided to make 1000 paper cranes: her wish was to live.A book written about her says she made 644, her family say she made more. Either way she has become a symbol for children who died as a result of the bomb, and for world peace.